


setting fire to our insides

by doubtthestars



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, M/M, future speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5538980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/pseuds/doubtthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Names have power. How Kylo Ren comes into being and thereafter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	setting fire to our insides

Ren is only a letter off from Ben.

He doesn't remember--pain lances through his skull, a little boy sings a child tune _Ren, ren, rhymes with Ben._ \--Ren doesn't need to remember because he has transcended Ben, transformed himself under the watch of the Supreme Leader to be only Ren. Kylo Ren of the Knights of Ren would vow with the blood (traitorous, light, and the only diluted connection he had to his great Sith grandfather) to be the one in control of his fate.

It is an honor to be baptized **Kylo** Ren. A leader in a tongue older than Solo and Skywalker combined.

But Hux needled at the respect Ren demanded even with the show of power in his hand. _Ren_ , he would whisper insidiously, a sneer pinching his mouth. _how will you cope when someone stronger comes along?_ Ren would deny the claim, no one could use the force to his capabilities. The fissure of hate widening every time Hux alluded to the failings of his mystic abilities, like his troops could protect him if he willed the breath out of his lungs.

Hux's mind was his only saving grace. The First Order needed Hux, and Ren could only lash out preemptively, striking rooms of enough importance to hinder Hux's work, to give him a taste of every setback he suffered with his insipid squads on a lead to Skywalker.

After all, there needed to be a little chaos where there was order. 

Being half-dead on a med-bed had become familiar like the rage he choked on as he woke up. He didn't need an explanation as to how he avoided the same fate as the Starkiller Base, skimming the minds of people beyond the medical bay he resided in with beeping machines and a single vigil. His anger crackled and scattered, troops hesitating in their daily routine as the red fog tinged with battery acid taste touched their minds.

Hux stood up from his council with the captains at the touch, breathing in for a pause and resuming with the finer points of their plan of action, scouting for another base and acquiring more troops to bolster their ranks.

Ren had learned his lesson, that child had bested him by the same tool he so revered. He could wait.

"You were lucky, a minute more and I would've pulled out my men before they located you." Ren stayed quiet, the regenerator operated by a droid's spindly attachment close to his heart, still repairing the gouge of the Wookie's weapon. His face looked a sight better than before. The flesh pink and shiny around the wound that cut across it days ago. 

"Luck," he rasped out, "had nothing to do with it." He had been delirious in pain but as soon as he had found another mind, he pushed the stormtrooper to the right location, insisting his saber be recuperated with him. 

Hux's face subtly changed, a hint of disbelief escaping him before schooling his expression into neutrality. He had no need of a physical mask like Ren insisted on using (although, now it would be justified, his eyes trace the healing line of skin down to the line of his throat.) The bare skin of his counterpart was littered with scars of close encounters and tricky battles. He dismissed the droid, gloved hand pressing into the tender wound. Ren barely hissed through his teeth.

"The Wookie missed." Ren met his eyes with a look that would mean death to a lesser man. Hux only waited, hand stilled on the path down the steps of his faintly-protruding ribs. 

"He didn't." Reluctance and bitterness clear in the statement. It was then that Hux understood Ren was rattled in the cage he had constructed. Emotions could only be drawn out for so long before they destroyed your very purpose. He leaned down, spine curving from the ramrod stance he had held since earning his first stripe. His hand hovered before angling Ren's chin to face him, storms brewing in dark eyes. Thinly and mean, he breathed, close enough to bite,

"Then you were lucky." He marched out as the zenith of Kylo Ren's rage hit the med bay.

Getting him to Supreme Leader Snoke was not something he could entrust with anybody, especially with the recent defection of FN-2187 still hanging over his head. A troop that had commendation from Captain Phasma to enter the field had failed and by the same hand, his entire program had to be scrutinized. He didn't have the time to hold Ren's leash but he could not ignore a direct order from the Supreme Leader. 

They had recovered five knights in the escape to the Finalizer, two presumably dead or off-base at the time of the Rebellion's attack. Hux didn't keep track of Ren's little mercenary group. He had a ship to run and troops to lead. Kylo Ren could surely manage seven people on his own. 

He calls in the Knights, knowing stormtroopers wouldn't do to shuttle Ren off.

Months passed into re-configuring his program, grudgingly implementing Captain Phasma's suggestion, raids that held small consequences, stress tests, new armor to consider vitals and tracking. One eye on the future and how to condition older troops, and the other on the rumors of Luke Skywalker resurfacing with that girl, the sandrat, as an apprentice. The First Order needed to prepare, not with the intangible count of Light and Dark but with weapons and soldiers, and Hux was going to be prepared.

When Ren appears, suddenly during a training exercise on an outer rim wasteland in a hail of lightning, a myth in the flesh, he isn't wearing a mask. Dark cloth envelops him, his arms outstretched, but Ren is calm as he sets foot in front of the general. 

Hux studies the new creature that is the Force-user, ignoring the pressure in his chest that felt like the sister of fear and anticipation combined. 

"Kylo Ren." He greets evenly. 

"General Hux, I'll be resuming my position on the Finalizer, and call me Darth Sieg." A wicked smile crosses Ren face. A new name for a new monster. Hux could almost see the bloodshed the new Sith lord would cause. The corner of his mouth curled minutely in return. He clicks his heels.

"The Finalizer welcomes Darth Sieg on board, troops." He snaps and the troops behind him fall into position, at attention and saluting. 

Respect was hard to earn but where Kylo Ren's anger was an unstable explosion waiting to blow a hand off, Darth Sieg's anger was a poison fog leaving bodies for the Rebellion to bury as he got closer to his goal. The only time Hux would see the fury of old was when Ren went through his saber forms. Supreme Leader Snoke had honed Ren into a capable weapon for the First Order and Hux knew to watch his back.

"Does using my former name help you with a semblance of control, Hux?" His mouth keeps his name between his teeth, flashing white. There is blood-lust in the air after the interrogation of a Rebel pilot. Hux eyes the folds of the robe in front of him, covering the Sith lord's neck. The space between their bodies has always been small, destined to collide but resisting the pull of strange attractors. He doesn't yield, chin raised.

"I don't need help with control, Sieg." A metal fixture overhead crumples and screeches as Ren crushes his mouth against his. This is another battleground they will fight on, they will die for.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not particularly attached to this ship but my bff is so this is for you ho. Also, Sieg, coming from the german word for victory but sort of like a play on siege. 
> 
> I did check if there was a similar darth but didn't find one. 
> 
> *strange attractors are not made up, or spelled wrong, part of the chaos theory because im a goddamn nerd. 
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
